1 Center for American Progress | 5 Things You Should Know About Powder River Basin Coal Exports

5 Things You Should Know About

Powder River Basin Coal Exports
By Nathan Joo, Matt Lee-Ashley, and Michael Madowitz August 18, 2014
Last month, the Center for American Progress published an issue brief that looked
at the massive climate impacts of low-cost coal mined in the Powder River Basin in
Wyoming and Montana.
1
Te Powder River Basin, or PRB, which is home to the largest
coal reserves in the United States, currently supplies approximately 40 percent of the
nations coal and accounts for a full 13 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
2
For
decades, the U.S. Department of the Interiors Bureau of Land Management, or BLM,
which owns the overwhelming majority of the coal reserves in the PRB, has incentivized
maximum production of coal in the region without regard for pollution costs or for the
fair return of revenue to taxpayers.
Our analysis reached the following standout conclusions that policymakers will need to
address as they explore long-overdue reforms to the BLM coal program.

As a result of federal policies, coal from the PRB is selling at below-market rates. At
$13 per ton, PRB coal sells for around one-ffh of the price of coal produced in the
Appalachian region.
3


Te carbon-pollution costs from mining and burning coal from the PRB are $62
per tonresulting in more than $19 billion per year in losses and damages from
carbon pollution.
4


In 2012, the United States exported almost 127 million tons of coal, making it the
fourth-largest coal exporter in the world behind Indonesia, Australia, and Russia.
5

Demand for U.S. coal exports is expected to rise dramatically in the coming years,
driven primarily by industrialization in India and China. At the same time, domestic
coal use is likely to fall due to lower demand in light of the Obama administrations
new power-plant rule, which will cut carbon pollution from existing power plants by
30 percent by 2030.
6
2 Center for American Progress | 5 Things You Should Know About Powder River Basin Coal Exports
Taken together, the PRBs below-market prices, sky-high pollution costs, and rising exports
represent a powerful threat to U.S. climate goals.
7
Put plainly: Massive exports of federal
coal undermine the carbon-pollution reductions the Obama administration is achieving at
home through improved vehicle efciency and curbed emissions from U.S. power plants,
while subsidizing other countries to burn coal owned by American taxpayers.
Despite the risks and drawbacks, however, the export of federal coal has received rela-
tively litle scrutiny or discussion in the context of U.S. climate policy.
8
For this reason,
we asked CAPs economists fve questions to help provide a deeper understanding of
the economics of coal exports and explain why policymakers should be concerned.
1. How much coal from the Powder River Basin is currently being exported?
Tus far, modest amounts are being exported. In 2012, all coal exports from the primary
PRB coal-producing states of Wyoming and Montana equaled approximately 3.128
million tons and 9.085 million tons, respectively.
9
Tis accounts for approximately 10
percent of the almost 127 million tons of coal exported out of American ports in 2012
and just 3 percent of the total 419 million tons of coal produced from the PRB in 2012.
10

2. With federal coal from the PRB selling at $13 per ton domestically,
why is more of it not currently being exported to China or to other
Pacific Rim countries where it could sell for 10 times as much?
Tis is going to sound trivial, but coal companies main barrier to increasing exports from
the Powder River Basin is their lack of capacity to load the coal onto ships. Tats it. Tere
is no signifcant coal-export capacity or throughput at U.S. ports on the Pacifc Coast, and
the capacity at existing shipping terminals in British Columbia is not sufcient to enable
large-scale coal exports to Asian markets.
11
It is also far less cost efective to transport PRB
coal to existing coal-export terminals in the U.S. Southeast and mid-Atlanticsuch as
Baltimore, Norfolk, New Orleans, Mobile, and Houstonfor export to Asian markets.
Coal companies are well aware of the demand growth in Asia and are working on
removing the infrastructure barrier they face on the West Coast. Reviews are under-
way for two new proposed coal ports in Washington stateat Longview and Cherry
Pointand one in Oregon, at the Port of Morrow in Boardman.
12
Together, the three
terminals would add more than 130 million tons of additional shipping capacity per
year.
13
According to recent projections by economists Tomas M. Power and Donovan
S. Power, with this new infrastructure in place, the projected delivery cost of PRB coal
to China will be approximately $77.16 per ton.
14
Te leading benchmark delivery price
in international coal shipping to the industrial southeastern region of China has fuctu-
ated between roughly $70 and $135 per ton over the last 5 years, with prices declin-
ing recently as Chinas economy has slowed.
15
It is worth noting that while shipping
3 Center for American Progress | 5 Things You Should Know About Powder River Basin Coal Exports
PRB coal from the United States to Southern China is more costly than shipping from
Australia or other Asian ports, the mine-mouth price of PRB coal is so much lower than
those of competitors that it more than makes up for the diference.
PRB coal can be delivered to China and other Asian markets at more than 40 percent
less than recent highs in Chinese prices, which is why the companies mining federally
owned coal in the PRB have a strong incentive to fgure out how to export it. It also
means that, taking into account transportation costs and other fees and charges, the
mine-mouth price of PRB coal could be as high as $53.93 per ton, a fourfold increase
from the current price, while still remaining competitive with benchmark delivery
prices in China and various other Asian markets.
16
While international coal prices have
declined in recent years, the completion of ports along the American West Coast would
still make PRB coal exports viable at all but the lowest recent southern China prices.
17
*
3. If the United States does not export PRB coal to China,
wont the Chinese simply buy their coal elsewhere?
Tis is a good question, and the answer hinges on how price sensitive Chinas medium-
to long-term coal consumption turns out to be.
18
It is true that PRB coal will compete
with and displace other coal sources shipped by sea to the southeastern coast of China,
but it will also compete with other fuels. Regardless of what other fuels PRB coal
competes with, however, its projected delivery price is so low that expanded shipments
would certainly have broader impacts on the Chinese energy market.
In simple terms, PRB coal exports will exert downward pressure on Chinese-market
coal prices. Tese low prices in turn make the consumption of coal-fred energy cheaper.
Given that the Chinese economy is still growing, this is likely to yield a further boost in
Chinese coal consumption. Te question is, by how much?
A recent empirical study of the Chinese coal market from 1980 to 2006 suggests the
price elasticity of demand for coal in China is -1.2 and the price elasticity of supply is
0.5. In other words, for every 1 percent decrease in the price of coal, Chinese demand
increases by 1.2 percent while supply to the Chinese market decreases by 0.5 percent. If
these estimates from the International Journal of Global Energy Issues
19
still hold, approxi-
mately 70 percent of the 130 million tons of PRB coal that is projected to be exported
through the Longview and Cherry Point export terminals would represent net addi-
tional coal consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, while only 30 percent would
displace other sources of coal.
20
In other words, importing more PRB coal would mean
the Chinese power sector would burn more coal, not merely replace other coal sources
with shipments from the U.S. market. Tis is not necessarily an isolated phenomenon
given strong demand and relatively high recent coal prices in various other countries
throughout Asia, including India and Japan. Tis patern of marginal additions in global
carbon emissions from the export of PRB coal is a distinct possibility across the region.
21
4 Center for American Progress | 5 Things You Should Know About Powder River Basin Coal Exports
4. Wont increased exports of PRB coal benefit
U.S. businesses and help create jobs?
Not necessarily. Tere is no question that the mining companies that operate in the PRB,
including the multinationals Arch Coal and Peabody Energy, will proft handsomely from
increased exportsthey would basically get much higher prices for the same product.
However, the U.S. job-creation benefts of increased coal exports are marginal at best.
PRB coal is cheap to produce in part because of the lower labor costs associated with
surface mining. Despite the fact that the PRB is the most productive coal region in
the country, it accounts for less than 8 percent of total American coal-mining employ-
ment.
22
In 2012, the PRB employed 6,983 coal miners. By contrast, in the Appalachian
regionwhere more labor-intensive underground mining is prevalent57,629 people
are employed in coal mining.
23
In fact, the displacement of Appalachian coal with lower-
cost PRB coal has been one of the major drivers of the overall loss of U.S. coal-mining
jobs since 1990.
24
Increased exports could result in marginal job gains in the PRB, but if
they further displace Appalachian coal, the net increase in employment from increased
exports would be negligible to negative.
5. How much will increased PRB coal exports contribute to global warming?
Because the costs of climate change are shared globally, any marginal net increase in
overseas carbon pollution has the same costs to the United States as emiting the carbon
pollution at home and undercuts domestic eforts to fght climate change. Signifcant
exports of PRB coal, however, would have uniquely large climate impacts. Even with
todays limited emissions, PRB coal would be the seventh-largest emiter of CO
2
among
nations.
25
Because the sales price, as opposed to the social cost,
26
of PRB coal is so low,
it will substantially lower the market-clearing price for coal in China and India. In other
words, exporting PRB coal will result in a fresh source of carbon pollution at a whole
new order of magnitude. Indeed, assuming 70 percent net additional consumptionas
we outline abovenew PRB export activity of 130 million tons to the southeastern
coast of China would result in the same annual increase in carbon pollution as adding
approximately 35 million new passenger cars to the road.
27
Nathan Joo is an intern with the Economics team at the Center for American Progress. Mat
Lee-Ashley is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Public Lands Project at the Center. Michael
Madowitz is an Economist at the Center.
*Correction, August 22, 2014: Tis fact sheet was updated to refect the large fuctuation in
coal delivery prices in China over the past fve years resulting partly fom the recent slowdown
in the Chinese economy and to clarify that our numerical analysis is based on a study specifc
to coal delivered to southeastern China as opposed to other Asian markets, such as India.
Endnotes 14 and 16 have been edited to clarify that the calculations draw fom information
and methodologies fom the cited sources, but that the results of the calculations are atribut-
able solely to the authors of this report.
5 Center for American Progress | 5 Things You Should Know About Powder River Basin Coal Exports
1 Nidhi Thakar and Michael Madowitz, Federal Coal Leas-
ing in the Powder River Basin (Washington: Center for
American Progress, 2014), available at http://www.ameri-
canprogress.org/issues/green/report/2014/07/29/94204/
federal-coal-leasing-in-the-powder-river-basin/.
2 WildEarth Guardians, The Powder River Basin
A Root Contributor to Global Warming, avail-
able at http://www.wildearthguardians.org/site/
PageServer?pagename=priorities_climate_energy_coal_
powder_river_global_warming#.U8ghEiTD8dU (last
accessed August 2014).
3 Thakar and Madowitz, Federal Coal Leasing in the Powder
River Basin.
4 Ibid.
5 U.S. Energy Information Administration, International
Energy Statistics, available at http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/
ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=1&pid=1&aid=4 (last ac-
cessed August 2014).
6 Danielle Baussan and others, Video: 5 Things You
Need to Know About the EPAs Clean Power Plan,
Center for American Progress, June 19, 2014, available
at http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/
news/2014/06/19/92339/5-things-you-need-to-know-
about-the-epas-carbon-power-plant-rules/.
7 Shakeb Afsah and Kendyl Salcito, US Coal Exports Erode
All CO2 Savings from Shale Gas, CO2 Scorecard, March
24, 2014, available at http://co2scorecard.org/home/
researchitem/29; Dina Cappiello, Not in my backyard: U.S.
sending dirty coal abroad,The Big Story, July 28, 2014,
available at http://bigstory.ap.org/article/not-my-backyard-
us-sending-dirty-coal-abroad.
8 Clark Williams-Derry, Unfair Market Value: By Ignoring
Exports, BLM Underprices Federal Coal (Seattle, WA:
Sightline Institute, 2014), available at http://www.sightline.
org/research/unfair-market-value/; Tom Sanzillo, The Great
Giveaway: An Analysis of the Costly Failure of Federal Coal
Leasing in the Powder River Basin (Washington: Institute for
Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, 2012), available at
https://docs.google.com/fle/d/0B_qWeYLAqoq1V2YyX3h-
nR25lcXM/edit; Taxpayers for Common Sense, Federal Coal
Leasing: Fair Market Value and a Fair Return for the Ameri-
can Taxpayer (2013), available at http://www.taxpayer.
net/images/uploads/downloads/TCS_Federal_Coal_Leas-
ing_Report_-_Final_-_Updated_10.4.13.pdf; U.S. Govern-
ment Accountability Ofce, BLM Could Enhance Appraisal
Process, More Explicitly Consider Coal Exports, and Provide
More Public Information (2013), available at http://www.
gao.gov/products/gao-14-140.
9 Energy Information Administration, Annual Coal Distribution
Report 2012 (Department of Energy, 2013), available at
http://www.eia.gov/coal/distribution/annual/.
10 U.S. Energy Information Administration, Coal Data Browser,
available at http://www.eia.gov/beta/coal/data/browser/#/
topic/33?agg=1,0&geo=g0000000000003ms&mntp=g&fr
eq=A&start=2008&end=2012&ctype=linechart&ltype=pin
&rtype=b&pin=&rse=0&maptype=0 (last accessed August
2014).
11 U.S. Energy Information Administration, Table 13. U.S. Coal
Exports by Customs District, available at http://www.eia.
gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t13p01p1.pdf (last ac-
cessed August 2014); Coal Association of Canada, Rail, Ports
& Terminals, available at http://www.coal.ca/transportation/
(last accessed August 2014).
12 Tom Kenworthy, Big Coals Export Lifeboat Hits Stormy
Seas, Center for American Progress, October 22, 2013, avail-
able at http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/
news/2013/10/22/77680/big-coals-export-lifeboat-hits-
stormy-seas/.
13 Thomas Michael Power and Donovan S. Power, The Impact
of Powder River Basin Coal Exports on Global Greenhouse
Gas Emissions (San Francisco, CA: Energy Foundation,
2013), p. 22, available at http://www.powereconconsulting.
com/WP/assets/GHG-Impact-PRB-Coal-Export-Power-
Consulting-May-2013_Final.pdf.
14 Ibid. Authors calculation assumes a $15 per ton mine-
mouth cost, $19.50 per ton to ship the coal via BNSF
Railway to the West Coast, $15 per ton to ship the coal to
southeastern China, a 17 percent value-added tax, and a
$5.40 per ton port fee.
15 Power and Power, The Impact of Powder River Basin Coal
Exports on Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions, p. 20, Table 1.
Leading import benchmark prices are drawn from sources
based in Qinhuangdao, China; Korea West, South Korea;
Newcastle, Australia; Kalimantan, Indonesia; and Richards
Bay, South Africa. Price range is for ICE globalCOAL New-
castle coal futures contracts.
16 Authors calculation assumes $19.50 per ton to ship the
coal via BNSF Railway to the West Coast, $15 per ton to ship
the coal to southeastern China, a 17 percent value-added
tax, and a $5.40 per ton port fee. Authors calculations are
derived from information and methodology in Power and
Power, The Impact of Powder River Basin Coal Exports
on Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions. See also Debjoy
Sengupta, Coal India may increase prices by 15-20 per
cent to control input costs, The Economic Times, August 12,
2014, available at http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.
com/2014-08-12/news/52727692_1_coal-india-input-
costs-board-meeting; Reuters, Indias coal imports rise on
power thrust, August 5, 2014, available at http://in.reuters.
com/article/2014/08/05/india-coal-imports-idINL4N0QB-
3MU20140805.
17 BIMCO, U.S. Coal Exports Beat Chinese Coal Imports as
the Most Infuential Coal Trade, June 26, 2013, available
at https://www.bimco.org/en/reports/market_analy-
sis/2013/0626_uscoal.aspx; Emiko Terazono, Thermal coal
prices to drop to $100 level, Financial Times, May 1, 2012,
available at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9ba1640a-93a6-
11e1-baf0-00144feab49a.html#axzz39d0168hu.
18 At one extreme, Frank Wolak has argued that Chinas
demand for coal is completely unafected by price. Under
this theory, exporting more coal to China has no efect on
Chinese emissions but raises the price in the rest of the
worldwhere coal demand is price sensitive. Because there
is no increase in Chinese coal consumption and because
higher world coal prices reduce coal use in the rest of the
world, exporting cheap coal to China could lower global
emissions. See Meredith Fowlie, Will coal exports abroad
ofset hard-won carbon reductions at home?, Energy Insti-
tute at HAAS, July 28, 2014, available at http://energyathaas.
wordpress.com/2014/07/28/will-coal-exports-abroad-
ofset-hard-won-carbon-reductions-at-home/; Mark Golden,
Reduce Greenhouse Gas by Exporting Coal, Says Frank
Wolak, Precourt Institute for Energy, available at https://en-
ergy.stanford.edu/news/reduce-greenhouse-gas-exporting-
coal-says-frank-wolak (last accessed August 2014); Shakeb
Afsah and Kendyl Salcito, Actually, US Coal Exports Do Hurt
Global Emissions: An Open Letter to Fowlie and Revkin, CO2
Scorecard, July 30, 2014, available at http://co2scorecard.
org/home/researchitem/30.
19 Jian-Ling Jiao, Ying Fan, Yi-Ming Wei, The structural break
and elasticity of coal demand in China, empirical fndings
from 19802006, International Journal of Global Energy
Issues 31 (4) (2009): 331344.
Endnotes
6 Center for American Progress | 5 Things You Should Know About Powder River Basin Coal Exports
20 Power and Power, The Impact of Powder River Basin Coal
Exports on Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions, p. 4. The
price elasticity of demand was assumed to be -1.2, while the
price elasticity of supply was assumed to be 0.5. See also
Miles K. Light, Charles D. Kolstad, and Thomas F. Rutherford,
Coal Markets, Carbon Leakage and the Kyoto Protocol.
Working Paper 99-23 (Center for Economic Analysis at
University of Colorado at Boulder, 1999), p. 4, available at
http://www.colorado.edu/economics/papers/papers99/
wp99-23.pdf; Bjorn Larsen, World Fossil Fuel Subsidies
and Global Carbon Emissions in a Model with Interfuel
Substitution.Working Paper 1256 (World Bank, 1992), p. 13,
available at http://www.climateactionproject.com/docs/
Larsen-FFsubs+C--2-941994.pdf; Paul J. Burke and Hua
Liao, Chinas coal demand is becoming more price elastic
(Canberra, Australia: Australian National University, 2014),
available at https://ccep.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/
fles/uploads/ccep_crawford_anu_edu_au/2014-02/burke-
and-liao-anu-2014_slides.pdf.
21 Lynann Butkiewicz, Coal in Asia and the Impact of the Shale
Gas Revolution: An Interview with Mark Thurber (Washing-
ton: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2013), available at
http://www.nbr.org/downloads/pdfs/ETA/PES_Thurber_in-
terview_03212013.pdf.
22 Authors calculations based on 2012 data from the U.S.
Energy Information Administration. See U.S. Energy Infor-
mation Administration, Coal Data Browser.
23 Ibid.
24 However, even though production increased in both
regions during the mid 1990s, Northern and Central Appala-
chias share of the US coal market both fell after 1990, while
the PRB share continued to increase (Figure 3). As discussed
in Chapter 2, competition from Northern Appalachia and
the PRB are signifcant reasons why Central Appalachian
coal production is projected to decline in the coming de-
cades. See Rory McIlmoil and Evan Hansen, The Decline of
Central Appalachian Coal and the Need for Economic Diver-
sifcation (Morgantown, WV: Downstream Strategies, 2010),
p. 7, available at http://www.downstreamstrategies.com/
documents/reports_publication/DownstreamStrategies-
DeclineOfCentralAppalachianCoal-FINAL-1-19-10.pdf. See
also Patrick Reis and Stephanie Stamm, Who Killed All the
Coal Jobs?, National Journal, November 4, 2013, available at
http://www.nationaljournal.com/pictures-video/who-killed-
all-the-coal-jobs-20131104.
25 Thakar and Madowitz, Federal Coal Leasing in the Powder
River Basin.
26 Ibid.
27 Authors calculations based on U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Average Annual Emissions and Fuel
Consumption for Gasoline-Fueled Passenger Cars and
Light Trucks (2008), p. 4, available at http://www.epa.gov/
otaq/consumer/420f08024.pdf; U.S. Energy Information
Administration, Carbon Dioxide Emission Factors for Coal,
available at http://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/
co2_article/co2.html (last accessed August 2014).